Losing Touch (2 page)

He smiles at her to show he's okay. She doesn't smile back.

‘She's my sister-in-law. I should be invited too. She needs a woman's support now that Jonti…' Sunila jangles a percussion of cutlery into the sink.

Jonti
. It's only been a year, but his brother's name can still make him catch his breath. Arjun smooths the spoons into the divider and picks apart the forks and knives. He folds a pan holder patterned with one large thistle leaf.

‘Haseena did invite you. But you'd already made plans with Pavitra.' He riffles through the clutter of coasters. Jonti would have had some joke to make Sunila laugh. ‘You could still come. Why not invite Pavitra along?'

‘To
her
house? I have some sense of decency.'

‘You want to come, or you don't want to come? What do you want, Sunila?'

‘Look at her. Living high on the hog.'

He is disgusted by the peculiar American phrase. ‘Please don't speak like that.'

‘It's not like I'm calling Haseena a pig, isn't it? Only the way she lives. Egyptian sheets and washing machine and dryer and what-all.' Sunila begins to hammer the pots and pans into a cupboard. ‘All I know is, she can't stay married.'

Haseena's first husband died from an overdose of sleeping tablets. The second husband was old when he married Haseena and died happy, six years later, having managed to leave her with a son. But Arjun can see that Sunila finds it too much of a coincidence. She is practically Wildean about it.
Losing one husband is unfortunate; losing two husbands…
Perhaps she thinks Haseena is cursed with the Evil Eye.

Despite Sunila's love of arguing with the unlucky Mormons who occasionally knock at the door, and her ability to quote long passages from the Bible in a staccato monotone, she is sensitive to an older, darker faith. Her right cheek tingles whenever something bad is going to happen. Arjun is tired of hearing premonitions of terror and destruction that are confirmed when she turns on the television.
See? War in the Congo. I told you
.
My cheek doesn't lie.

He might dismiss the Evil Eye, but Sunila's evangelical beliefs have hammered their way into Arjun. He wasn't much of a Hindu anyway and he wanted some kind of religious education for the children. Sunila firmly settled them into a local Seventh-day Adventist church. At first, he stuck to the periphery of church activities, reluctant to be involved. And, for his evident Christian humility, he was elected head deacon.

The shock of being propelled into church meetings and board duties gave way to a feeling of being placed somewhere. The satisfying predictability of his weekend duties has led him to recognize that he does have a god of sorts. As he follows his quiet routine of setting out chairs, neatly stacking the weekly programmes, wiping a duster over the pulpit, his god appears in the early-morning light from the high windows across the clean linoleum floor of the church. Arjun's god seems content to potter about the pews and smile gently from the sidelines. Arjun is aware that his god would be found wanting by Sunila's god. He wonders if everyone's gods get together to swap notes. Some might be shy, others more convivial. Sunila's god, the bossy one, would make all the jokes while everyone else would politely listen. He catches himself. Surely it's blasphemous to think of the Christian God in the plural?

The door is flung open. Tarani bursting with injustice: ‘Mum, it's not
fair
. He's got my tranny. It's
mine
.'

‘Stop all this screeching. Speak slowly and calmly.' The interruption makes Arjun irritated.

‘But it's
mine
. And he won't
give
it to me.'

‘Now, now. I'm sure Murad will give it back.' Sunila tries to calm her.

‘Leave this to me, Sunila. All this nonsense about a transistor radio. We should never have bought it in the first place.'

‘It was a Christmas present, Arjun.'

‘It's not fair. I
hate
him.' Tarani's crying twists her thin face.

‘Be quiet!' Arjun, always surprised at how Tarani can make him lose his temper so quickly.

Sunila tries to joke Tarani out of her sulk. ‘You know you always exaggerate.'

‘Sunila, stop pandering to her.'

‘What's all this pandering-shandering?'

‘You're interfering with—'

‘
I
interfere? I was just talking to her—'

‘It's not
fair
.'

Arjun turns and slaps Tarani's face. Her mouth drops open.

‘You brought it on yourself. Now go upstairs.'

Tarani rushes upstairs. He can hear her sobbing. So dramatic at such a young age. It is Sunila's fault. He had the situation well under control and then she ruined everything.

‘She'll get over it.' He lifts his chin away from the shirt collar.

Sunila begins to wash a couple of mugs in the sink. Let her sulk. He has a bus to catch. ‘I'll be back this afternoon. Give my love to Pavitra.' He keeps his voice level as he exits the kitchen.

He buttons up his coat and clears his throat. Discipline is essential for children. Anyway, it was only a tap. She'll be fine by tonight.

Outside, the cold air lifts him away from the needlings of stress. His shoulders relax, his walking pace picks up and he breathes into the quiet of the street.

A neighbourhood of identical semi-detached houses: some of them strain for a sense of separate identity with their shutters painted green, yellow or maroon, the front doors stained pine or teak. A breeze ripples the airy fields of TV antennae as he turns to walk up a tree-lined road. An iron fence runs for about an eighth of a mile, enclosing Heinz Laboratories, the buildings set back in their park and screened by tall stands of trees. They need a lot of privacy for whatever fearful ketchup experiments they conduct.

The brisk pace calms him and he arrives at the bus stop feeling cheerful. It is a clear October morning. The birches cling on to summer, while beneath the chestnut trees the handspan leaves change colour and the beeches are skirted with red and purple patchwork.

The bus comes quickly and Arjun settles into a window seat, watching as the road pulls away from lingering fields, gradually gathers small parades of shops, housing estates, a comprehensive school, an eruption of traffic lights and finally narrows its brows as it ploughs into the coriander-mint chutney and
achari
mutton smells of Little India, Southall, where the shops run their wares right out onto the pavement. Women in saris and shalwars flip dupattas and pallus over determined shoulders to do battle with shopkeepers.

A young girl in a shalwar khameez slips into the seat in front of him. How sweet she looks in her shalwar, something that Tarani would never wear. The girl settles her dupatta scarf over her head and turns to look out of the window. She softly hums a tune, nodding her head.

The bus slows to a crawl as the men and their women and their daughters and sons and the perpetually astonished babies, and the pavement-gazing bent-backed old men, one hand behind their backs, the other holding a black cane that stabs at the road in front of them, cross in front and behind until the bus is a small boat carried along through an endlessly parting and closing sea.

The young girl hums and taps pink-frosted fingernails against the window. A woman sitting in front of the girl turns around and stares. The girl doesn't notice, and Arjun is pleased. Let the child sing.

The bus settles into a low gear, drifts along, gentled into a different time, and another tune drifts into Arjun's mind. He is transported back to India, to the boarding-school Christmas party. Loops of green and red and blue paper chains wreathe the hall, the twenty-foot tree, heavy with tinsel and lights, bending slightly to the right as if listening to the music. He'd been dancing with Anju Padiyar, turning solemnly round and round to this very waltz.

The soft shuffle of feet across the floorboards, a teacher winding up the gramophone one more time. Anju is a pretty girl. If only she were Lorna.

Anju jerks his hand. ‘Am I invisible, then?'

‘What? Oh. No. I'm sorry.' He smiles at Anju, as Lorna is swept past him by a tall Marati boy, who drags her about as if she were a mop.

‘I suppose you'd rather be dancing with
her
.' Anju tosses her dense mass of dark curls. Anju has round eyes, an upturned nose, a perfectly round rosebud mouth. Arjun knows there are at least fifteen boys who would love to be in his place.

‘Who else is in the room when you are, er, in the room?'

Anju rolls her eyes. ‘Is that the best you can do?'

‘It's a beautiful night, isn't it?'

‘It's boring. You haven't said
anything
about my dress. Or my hair.' The curl-toss. ‘It took me
hours
to get ready.'

She could be wearing a sheet for all he knows. He and Lorna never talk about such trivia. They share secrets: he hates his father, she hates her sister. He hates the captain of the cricket team, she hates that Anglo-Indian Bonnie Deefholts and her long brown hair. They both adore chum-chum, Branston Pickle and library period. She is reading Byron. He is reading
Biggles
. She scolds him for his juvenile tastes. He mocks her love of the romantic poets. Even so, when she is lost among the cantos, he gazes at her wavy dark hair, far more beautiful than Bonnie Deefholts'. He loves how her right eyebrow twitches slightly when she finds something especially beautiful. It is a signal that he must reimmerse himself in his own book, since she will look up to read him a couplet. For this he must look slightly bored, indicating that he is busy reading.

Arjun starts. The conductor is calling out, ‘Ealing Broadway'. This is his stop. What nonsense, dreaming over memories. He might have ended up in Shepherd's Bush. As he steps down onto the pavement, his right leg buckles and he is thrown against the metal bus-stop pole. He grabs at it, managing to stop himself from falling. His right leg won't straighten properly, won't respond. People stream past, averting their faces as though he's done something particularly offensive.

A man in a cloth cap and gabardine raincoat stops. ‘Are you all right? Had a bit of a tumble there.'

‘No, no. I'm fine, thank you. It's just clumsiness. I was getting off the bus.' His embarrassed smile pleads for the man to move on, but he stays.

‘Nearly fell base over apex off the tube the other day. Whole army of chaps shoving to get off.' The man has clear blue eyes and a neat salt-and-pepper moustache. ‘Sometimes wonder where common courtesy has gone to, these days. It wouldn't hurt for people to slow down a bit, get off the bus like civilized human beings instead of a torrent of lemmings.'

Arjun is momentarily distracted by the image. ‘Yes. We do tend to rush about.' Almost without realizing it, he's adopted the man's speech pattern. ‘No reason for it, really.'

‘Absolutely right.' The man narrows his eyes. ‘What regiment are you?'

Arjun realizes he's talking to an old war vet. ‘Not the army. Air Force.'

‘Ah. Fly boy, eh?' The man laughs. ‘My son wants to join up. Told him to keep his feet on the ground.'

Arjun clears his throat. ‘I was in the medical corps. Nursing.'

‘Capital. Yes. Knew you were a services man.'

Still holding onto the bus stop, his coat rumpled and his leg only just beginning to take its weight again, Arjun knows he cannot possibly look the part.

The man leans in a little. ‘Shoes. Always know a man by his shoes.'

Arjun looks down. His highly polished black shoes gleam in the weak mid-morning sun. He glances at the man's shoes. Brown brogues, perforated with the signature pattern, also highly polished.

‘Well, I'd best be on my way. Nice talking to you.' The man touches his hat.

Arjun finds his right leg is able to take his weight and he nods. ‘Good day to you.'

He stops in front of a shop window to check his clothing. Everything is normal. His forehead feels tender from the collision with the pole. He wipes his face with his handkerchief. No blood. Just a bruise, then.

He walks carefully, but his leg now responds perfectly. How thoughtful of the man to stop and speak to him, to give him enough time to recover, to deflect the curious attention of passers-by. People are so kind.

He tries a more brisk pace and the leg is perfectly all right, as though nothing just happened to make the left leg have to brace against the sudden loss of the right leg. He felt nothing except the lurch of the unexpected. Will it happen again, in front of Haseena?

He walks along the tree-lined street. The houses are more spacious, the gardens much larger. No children tear up and down on bikes or scooters. There is a sense of peace and dignity, the kind of England he read about while he was in India. He relaxes into his usual stride, enjoying the sheer physical pleasure of walking. The fall was nothing; just a small irregularity. He turns left into the familiar cul-de-sac and rings the doorbell at number twenty-two.

He hears thumping feet and a high voice. ‘Uncle!' Haseena opens the door, and seven-year-old Sadiq flings himself at Arjun.

‘Let Uncle come in.' Haseena hugs Arjun. ‘Arjun, so lovely to see you.'

Arjun lifts Sadiq for a hug. ‘How big you are, Sadiq. You'll have to carry me.'

Sadiq struggles to get down. ‘I can do it, Uncle.' He wraps his arms around Arjun's legs and struggles to lift. ‘See? I did it.'

‘Are you going to be a weightlifter?'

Sadiq considers. ‘I might.'

Haseena stares at Arjun. ‘Your forehead − oh, Arjun − what happened?'

‘It's nothing. Just an accident.'

‘Did someone hit you, Uncle?'

‘
Goonda
. Your uncle isn't a prize fighter.'